Staff profiles

Dr Evelyn O'Malley

Lecturer

I joined the department of drama at Exeter in 2016, having worked as a lecturer in theatre at Falmouth University.

My research interests are within the environmental humanities, with current projects looking at Shakespeare in the weather, ecology and Shakespeare in contemporary performance, performing weathering, and climate-change in the theatre. I am completing a monograph, Weathering Shakespeare: audiences and outdoor performance, which is under contract with Bloomsbury Academic's Environmental Cultures series and, with Randall Martin, I have co-edited a special issue of Shakespeare Bulletin on Eco-Shakespeare in Performance (2018). At present, I am also co-investigator on an AHRC-funded project, Atmospheric Theatre: Open-Air Performance and the Environment which investigates how attending an open-air dramatic performance might infouence playgoers' awareness of their arial environment.

I am co-investigator on the interdisciplinary NERC-funded Climate Stories project, using storytelling approaches to communicating anthropogenic climate change with climate scientists and weather-forecasters. I am also working on two projects concerning the sea and coastal areas. The first, 'Taking the Ferry', concerns the nonhuman performance of the Irish sea between Dun Laoghaire and Holyhead as a site for women’s abortion journeys. An article titled 'Taking the Ferry: performing queasy affects through Irish abortion travel in Thorny Island and My Name is Saoirse' is forthcoming with Contemporary Theater Review. The second project, 'Dancing as the tide comes in', considers what it means to keep dancing in response to global sea-level rise, thinking through questions of identity, heritage, and diaspora.

My original training was in musical theatre at the Arts Educational Schools, London, and that background in practice and subsequent professional performance experience continues to inform my research and teaching.